Secrets of My Research Success:
Starting Your Research

Transcript

Think back on the last time you needed information. Perhaps you were planning a vacation or determining where to go to purchase the latest technology gadget. Maybe you were at work and your supervisor asked you to locate information needed for a project. Possibly you had to write a research paper for your class. Where did you go to find that information? How did you decide whether it met your needs? How did you use it?

Welcome to the Secrets of my research success. Here you will learn the research skills and concepts needed to locate, evaluate and use information. What you will learn as you move through each of these topics is transferable. You will use these same skills to meet your research needs during your academic career and after you graduate.

Throughout this research process tutorial, you will have the opportunity to reinforce your learning through a game related to the concept or skill learned. At the end of the story you will be able to test your overall knowledge through a final quiz.

Good luck and happy researching!

The Hollywood rumor mill has been working overtime. The takeover of Morris Studios by a major production company seems imminent. Employees and investors are anxious. In a world of uncertainty, can anyone come through with information to help?

Meet Quentin Austin,

UMUC student with a research assignment due this week

Personal assistant of Allison Morris, the famous film producer

Meet Danielle,

Colleague of Quentin at Morris Studios

Meet Mike,

Librarian at UMUC

Starting Your Research

Time: Day 1

Place: Morris Studios lunch room

Quentin:

My research assignment is coming up. But with the tense situation at work, I can't even start to think about the assignment…… Hi, Danielle.

Danielle:

Hi, Quentin. This whole corporate takeover thing really has me on edge. I don't know anything about it so I googled corporate takeovers, but there was so much information that I couldn't find anything useful.

Quentin:

Wait a minute. I know how we can find information about all of this takeover stuff. A librarian from UMUC talked about the whole research process in one of my classes. He also showed us how to locate better information using the library databases, instead of relying on just the Internet. Since I'm a student at UMUC I can access these databases and I can contact the librarian for help on how to use them.

This is great! I can use this as my paper topic. Not only will I be able to get research on corporate takeovers for my class, but I'll also be able to learn what the takeover may mean to us.

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